A Voice Apart

 I have more and more inquiries from people who used to sing for some time in the past; and suddenly, (or at least so they thought), lost their singing range and some of them even lost their singing voice altogether . Now they are older and in their 40s (and counting), and they still cannot get a grip on the notion that their love and joy of singing might never be present again...? Quite a few years later after the occurrence, they had been still upset and even depressed about it.   Of course, they had been through numerous visits to doctors, speech therapists, pathologists and nevertheless many vocal coaches. However, in the majority of cases, it did not add up to any tangible, needless to say, expected results. With the above said, since they had lost their love and joy to be able to sing effortlessly and painlessly, their lives were never the same. Their passion and desire for expressing themselves, (telling their stories and expressing their emotions through singing), ha

Adapt and Make It Yours: Integration and Synergy Between: Mental Physical Emotional And Voice/Vocal Components...  The above would make you a better speaker or singer, and nevertheless, a more complete person... We work with a lot of voice and vocal disorders, but in a real sense, my definition of the above will be that it is actually more so a life 'disorder', in a manner of speaking. Serious voice disorders like Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD) and Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD) are mostly emotionally induced. My mentor in the health department (retired now) was always asking her clients, "What exactly can you not swallow?"   Indeed!  I remember those words of wisdom since I met this person from whom I have learned a holistic approach to the human body, mind, and emotions. And then I connected it to voice disorders (while in the process of doing it for many years), totally understanding that it is not only the voice problem(s) my clients possess but, in the majority of ca

The Royans Professional Vocal School (a.k.a, The Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts) was founded in 1984 by my partner Ted Kowalczyk & myself. Prior to that, Ted and I performed as a duo around the Toronto area which was called Toronto Mini Caravan. Both of us were involved in multicultural events and had been highly profiled on multicultural radio and TV stations as well as performing at numerous CHIN Picnics. In 1983, a Veteran Toronto Polish musician named Stephan Pavliak incidentally overheard me playing piano and singing some Russian romances while I was awaiting in the lobby of the Academy of Music (where I worked as a piano and singing instructor) for my student’s arrival. He approached me, commending me on my talent and offered to help me out (along with my partner Ted) to open a music school which he thought I could successfully carry for many years to come. As of today, the school exists for almost 34 consecutive years. Unfortunately, my partner had passed away

Lately, we are witnessing a lot of shows interrupted and tour cancellations from well-known artists. Who is going to be next?? Sometimes, artists, during their performances, actually cannot complete the act they have been performing or even often feel that they will have to stop their performance in the middle, if not the tour altogether...  Every singer, intuitively feels whether or not they will be able to "lift" their performance(s) to achieve at least a reasonable merit, so to speak. All of that is because the majority of them do not have a solid ground of knowledge on how to power the voice and not kill it, or themselves in the process. Most Recently... BREAKING NEWS!  AEROSMITH Cancel Their Rescheduled Shows and Retire from the Stage!  We recently found out that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith had sustained a serious and extensive vocal injury, thus, needing to postpone Aerosmith's 50th Anniversary/Farewell Tour.  He had been diagnosed by doctors with a fractured larynx

"Why... What's Wrong With Potato?" - Exclaimed Officer Jesse Mills (Tech), not knowing what's going on... A lot of you are most likely familiar with the hit Canadian TV Show that is titled “Hudson & Rex”. In our opinion, it is a very smart and intelligent show (truly Canadian), which possesses a lot of subtle humour… One of the episodes, as usual, about some crime taking place, was about the woman who wrote the book about her own invented diet named “Say No to Potato”...?    She ended up starving herself to death while documenting her own wedding… By the end of the investigation of what exactly happened, Detective Charlie Hudson was handed that very book, and yes, it was indeed named “Say No to Potato”. I found it extremely funny, but, nevertheless, quite to the point… In this case, concerning the human speaking and/or singing voice, I would like you to state; “Say No to Digital, Old-Fashioned Conventional Vocal Coaching, Let Alone Some Spoof of the Voice Repai

Dear readers,  As promised, we would like to profile a few more people who suffered from one of the nastiest voice disorders - Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD).  First up, we have a testimonial from Zelda A - Spasmodic Dysphonia sufferer from Brampton, Ontario Canada: "I don't know where I would be if I did not find you.. I would definitely be doing a review with 100 stars if I could!...” Hope for the Future. “I found Diana by chance when I was looking for a more natural approach to my MTD ( muscle tension Dysphonia ) which, some time ago, I was diagnosed with by an ENT Doctor. I have been slowly losing my speaking voice for almost a year. I have gone to several doctors and also speech therapy without a solid resolution. It's like having laryngitis....X50, which never goes away! When I started working with Diana, she right away told me that my voice sounds like I have a  Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD) . That was even more disheartening than the previous diagnosis of MTD. Diana right awa

 Yesterday, in celebration of Mother's Day, my assistant Vlad and I, finally went to see "Stars On Ice".  Before the Pandemic, I was attending those shows every single year without ever missing one!  Then the Pandemic hit and for two years those shows, like everything else, were unfortunately cancelled.  I have to say, that the organization of the show was better than ever - the technical elements like the lighting on the ice and lighting overall, were amazing, to say the least!  However, the skaters themselves were performing in a little less capacity and less quality than before, especially in the first part of the show.  The group performance synchronicity, in a lot of moments throughout their skating together, was sometimes just lost.    Some of them were doing, to say the least, very strange performances, and also, quite shorter than usual.  There were a few of them, though, which reached the bar, so to speak.  Number One, from our perspective, was a petite Japanese